newday

Associate Professor Sukhbir Sandhu is the Executive Director for the Centre of Workplace Excellence (CWeX) at the University of South Australia. The environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues that she researches include both local challenges (e.g., reducing single use plastic waste in South Australia, reviving regional areas in Australia through circular economy) and global challenges (e.g. working with farmers in developing countries to protect ecosystems, driving sustainability in multinationals).

She has contributed to alleviating these complex ESG problems by becoming a “boundary spanner” – publishing in top tier management journals and in highly-ranked practitioner journals, ensuring that her work simultaneously impacts academics and practice. Her work has appeared in leading outlets such as the Administrative Science Quarterly and Harvard Business Review. She has also published three best-selling books on ESG.

Associate Professor Sandhu’s work has been featured in more than 80 newspaper and magazine articles (including The Australian Financial Review, The Australian and The National Geographic), in podcasts, the ABC, SBS and in the Adelaide Writer’s Festival.

At Newday, Sukhbir will share her latest research on how to be a wise leader (“From Knowledge to Wisdom”). Never have we expected more of leadership—and never have we been so disappointed. In a world where change is the only constant she will discuss how leaders can restore and renew their organisations by focusing on wise leadership to address wicked problems.

Matthew Wright-Simon is delighted to be working with the Newday Leadership team, working alongside Katrina in curating and designing and hosting summits, labs and our recent eSeries. As he has done since 2018, Matthew will link the intimacy of what's shared with the big picture and the events that shape our lives as leaders.

Matthew's purpose is to creatively stimulate, facilitate, engage and activate people to contribute to positive social, environmental and economic impact – and to have a lot of fun in the process!

Matthew's diverse commercial work with engagement consultancy, Ecocreative, is informed by his roles in thought leadership, philanthropy and conservation with TEDxAdelaide, the Awesome Foundation and Landscape Partnerships, an environmental NGO he co-founded several years ago.

In 2019, Matthew co-founded Double Denim, a sustainable textiles social enterprise that benefits a women's homelessness service. This is one of several social enterprise ventures he helps lead, complemented by his role on the board of the South Australian Social Enterprise Council peak body. In 2019-20, Matthew was voted as one of Pro Bono Australia's Impact 25 for his contribution to social and environmental advocacy and enterprise in Australia.

Katrina Webb is recognised and acknowledged for her unique athleticism and outstanding success as a Paralympic athlete. She has won Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in athletics at three Paralympic Games. She was the first torch bearer to enter the Olympic Stadium for the Opening Ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games and in 2006 Katrina was selected to present on behalf of the International Paralympic Committee to the United Nations in New York. To add to this she has walked the Kokoda track and has trekked to Basecamp Everest. In 2012 & 2016, Katrina was selected as one of two Paralympians Ambassadors for the International Paralympic Committee at the London, Rio & Tokyo Paralympic Games. Due to her own experience in dealing with a disability and a desire to help others, Katrina is a passionate humanitarian. She currently organises leadership treks to Nepal including Everest Basecamp, raising funds for the health, education and protection of children in Nepal.

Katrina is an international speaker, leadership and personal mastery consultant, trainer in wellbeing and resilience, a physiotherapist and also the founder and director of Newday.

At this Newday Leadership Lab, Professor Magda Nenycz-Thiel will share what marketing science is teaching us about brand growth. A combination of a talk, Q&A and practical exercises, the lab will leave you with ideas on what to stop doing and how to approach brand growth in a different and evidence based way.

As Industry Growth Professor at UniSA, together with a research team at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, Magda focuses on applying discoveries to improve the ways that growth investments are made within organisations. Newday understands the value in Magda's strategic thinking (she is one of our trusted advisors).

Magda’s core areas of expertise are category and industry growth, e-commerce and neuromarketing. Her work has been published widely including in international research journals and she is also the author of two chapters in the best-selling book How Brands Grow Part 2.

Like many who grew up in the Khumbu (Everest region), Tashi comes from a long line of mountaineers. His grandfather died tragically in an avalanche and despite the risks Tashi’s father followed into the family business working on ascents of Everest and many other peaks.

Tashi however started out on a different path before succumbing to the call of the mountains. He was a buddhist monk for 14 years where he specialised in being a medic at Kopan monastery in Kathmandu and received a degree in community health work.

Life in the mountains was a natural fit for Tashi. He started guiding treks in 2007 and three years later he moved on to the big mountains. Since then he has summited and guided Mt. Everest seven times, Ama Dabalm, and Baruntse, and led trekking peak climbs of Island, Mera, Pachermo and others. Tashi is a certified professional International Mountain guide with a Diploma in Mountain and an Instructor of Nepal Mountaineering Instructor Association. At Newday, Tashi will discuss leadership lessons from a buddhist monk to leading people to the top of the world.

(Please note: Tashi's confirmation is based on his visa being granted to Australia)